It’s a balance. I love WoS, understanding the shortcomings and acting accordingly. I’ve had no luck with my own lightning channels, so I’d rather outsource it (for now).
Discussion
I tried maintaining my own lightning node and found it onerous, and did make me appreciate how easy centralized services make it look.
I have frequent seasonal power outaged and in consequence my channel partners punished me with unilateral closures. This experience, the fees, the necessary knowledge, and maintenance involved made me hope for an improved layer 2 to see instant cheap and anonymous payments become easier to truly self-custody and operate.
As a result lf this experience I learned to appreciate again Bitcoin's base layer.
Same. Rebalancing was expensive, time- consuming, and unprofitable for me.
It was such a drag to see behind the wizard of Oz's curtain, and subsequently realize that worldwide lightning liquidity depends on just a few mega-nodes. Layer 2 improvements are such a necessary thing for further adoption, but I also understand many devs are thinking outside the box and hard at work on this. I appreciate what they do.
Right. I think if someone has a few bitcoin then it could be worth it, and with the right network it could get close to "set it and forget it," but for smallish channels... not with the time. I was disappointed because I wanted to support the network and grow adoption locally.
All valid. Phoenix/Breez/Blixt are awesome self custodial options. Unfortunately they don't work too well hosting something like a lightning address....yet. it's coming though
As a Breez user I encountered the same restriction. Is this an inherent limitation of non-custodial wallets? Would you know how this problem could be solved or where one can find how much progress is made on this?
It's a problem with mobile lightning nodes because a lightning address needs needs a webserver and that webserver and relies on DNS which only works well with a reasonably stable IP address. With a node setup at your home or busines or wherever, it's pretty easy to setup a self custody lightning address.